Jimenez Lai

Founder, Bureau Spectacular/Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

On the gap year:
I took a year off and lived and worked in a desert shelter in Taliesin and later in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam.

On inspiration:
I’m fired up about the art of architecture—more precisely, formalism and historicism. When people talk about being more than just architects, about solving other world problems—affordable housing, carbon emission, landscape urbanism—in my mind, they’re effectively forfeiting the very thing they’re supposed to be an expert on. If we’re not going to cultivate formalism, who will?

On licensure:
Right now, I’m really turned off by it. We’re only going to be young for so long, so why would I want a legal document that warrants me liable for random things, and limits my creative ambitions in the meantime? My peers who were invested in getting licensed seem to have quickly grown old on the inside. Basically, it’s like high school: I’d rather hang out with the goths and the grunge kids than the school-spirit people.